


The Space Between

by Uglysweater



Series: One and Then The Other [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: First Kiss, Kissing, M/M, Misunderstandings, soft kiss!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:31:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5150330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uglysweater/pseuds/Uglysweater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was nothing about this that was explainable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space Between

**Author's Note:**

> RONAN LYNCH KISSES SOFT LIKE A LITTLE BUNNY

_This shouldn't be soft._

_Nothing about this should be soft._

Ronan was incendiary. He was made of flash paper, ready to ignite at any moment. Ronan Lynch was not a soft person. There was nothing about this that was explainable. 

There was nothing about how Ronan Lynch kissed that was supported by evidence. 

_This shouldn't be so soft_ , Adam thought again. Ronan's lips were so soft that it reminded Adam how chapped his own were. Everything about Adam was chapped. Too dry. Cracked at the surface and cracked underneath. 

Everything except his hands. 

_Ronan_ , Adam sighed. Or maybe he just thought it. He must have just thought it. His mouth was otherwise occupied. By Ronan Lynch. 

He tried to think about what lead him to this moment. He tried to think at all. But everything just sort of fizzled out, leaving only the softness of Ronan's lips in its place.

Adam almost wished it was firmer. More aggressive. Something Adam Parrish would know how to react to. 

He wished the kiss were more like the Ronan he knows. Or at least more like the Ronan that Ronan presented out in the open. Maybe after sunset, when only the small fan on the desk was making sound, maybe then Ronan was soft. 

Instead, Adam had no idea how to react to this. He felt like a dim old lightbulb just turned on. A lightbulb that took a few minutes for the filaments to actually light. Adam felt like his switch had been flicked but the light wasn’t bright yet and it was just the sound of electricity in the darkness. Just a buzz before he actually had to react. 

Adam hasn’t reacted. He told himself not to react. It might not be real. 

Or maybe he didn’t. He’d let himself kiss Ronan back. Let his mouth move against Ronan's. Let his head tip forward towards the other boy. 

Ronan wasn’t even touching him. Other than on the mouth. His one hand was resting by Adam's knee, an inch as wide as the Grand Canyon between them. Adam didn’t know where Ronan's other hand was. Not on him, anyway. Adam’s own hands were still clutching the trig textbook on his lap. Still holding the book he had been pretending to study from as he studied Ronan's profile. Fingers still grasped on the page he'd just turned when Ronan turned to him and he hadn’t been able to stop looking at Ronan's lips. His knuckles hurt from holding on so tight. 

Ronan pulled back. 

"Is this? Was that okay?" He asked. It sounded like he needed to cough. Or drink some water. He sounded dry. Bare. 

"Why did you do that?" Adam asked.

"It’s a simple yes or no question, Parrish." 

"So's mine." He had to ask. He had to ask because the answer to _Is this okay?_ depended heavily on the answer to _Why did you do that?_

Ronan stared at him. Without breaking eye contact he swept the only notebook he’d brought to St. Agnes into his backpack. He mumbled something under his breath when he finally broke his gaze. 

"Listen. It's fine. Ronan." Adam couldn’t move. 

"I know it's fine." Ronan swung his backpack over his shoulders. It hit his back with a thud. Back to not-soft-Lynch, "Don't worry about it. See you tomorrow, Parrish." 

And Adam was left alone, with only the sound of the fan on the window to fall asleep to. 

The sound of the little window fan provided the soundtrack for the next three hours. Laid out in bed, he replayed the events of the night. 

Ronan had come over, like normal. They had sat too close, like normal. They’d both pretended to read while they both silently tried to decipher what the other was doing while they pretended to read. 

Everything had been fine. 

Until Adam fucked up. It was a silent, unspoken rule between them that they would look away if they noticed the other looking. It was rule number one in avoiding this strange space between them. They were never to look at each other at the same time, especially alone. The only way around it if they were caught was to start a fight. Take a stab and piss the other off. 

Adam hadn't done that. He’d kept looking at Ronan. He’d kept looking at his mouth.

His soft mouth. 

And then Ronan had kissed him, and he had no idea what to do with that. 

Then Ronan had left and Adam _really_ hadn’t known what to do with that. 

One hour ticked by and Adam thought, _Ronan kissed me._

A second one passed and Adam thought, _I kissed Ronan._

As every minute of the next sixty crawled past Adam, all he could think about was the kiss. _We kissed, we kissed, we kissed_ thought in time with the pulse of the fan on the window. 

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day felt like a door slammed shut. Hitting hard and fast and too close. The bang resonated in Adam's chest and made him flinch. 

Adam spent the whole length of Latin actively trying to convince himself Ronan wasn’t there. Which became easier two periods later in chemistry, when Ronan actually wasn’t there. 

When the final bell had rung, Gansey caught his attention. 

"You took your bike today?" He asked, and Adam nodded. Gansey knew not to ask why he had taken his bike, even though it was supposed to rain later. At the end of every other week, Adam traded his car for the bike, just to stretch his paychecks a little further. Gansey knew. He knew not to mention it. 

"I'll drop you off at the psychics’ if you want." Gansey offered. It was a good offer. It had already started to rain. It even looked like it could turn to hail any minute. But Adam had to decline. 

"It's okay. I have to go to work after practicing with them."

"Oh. It would be no trouble to wait. I'll make myself busy" Gansey said. He suddenly looked tense. Not tense. Brimming. Filled. He had looked like this when they’d found Cabeswater the first time. He looked like this every time he thought about Blue Sargent. 

Adam shrugged and followed Gansey out to the bike rack. They quickly threw the bike into the Pig's trunk, but they still ended up soaked. 

Gansey drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He kept flicking his gaze over to Adam. A few times he took a deep, tense breath in like he wanted to say something. 

Finally, he said, "Is it weird?" 

Adam looked at him. Gansey's eyes were trained forward, drilling a hole into the windshield. 

"You and Blue?" He asked. Gansey groaned and his knuckles turned white against the steering wheel. 

"It's weird right? I don't think- What I mean is I know we can't-" He pressed his palm against his face, "I just wanted to respect you and make sure nothing I was doing was hurting your feelings." 

Adam shrugged. He didn’t know how to answer. He wasn’t sure how to say that Gansey-and-Blue didn’t bother him, but how Adam thought about it did. He didn’t know how to say he didn’t mind until he did. He didn’t have the words to say it wasn’t about Gansey-and-Blue, he just felt lonely. He didn’t know how to say any of that without sounding pathetic. So he shrugged. 

"It is weird though," Gansey said again, "We're friends." 

"It's bad to date your friends?" Adam asked, not thinking about anyone. Not thinking about the night before. But there was a weird hitch in his voice. Gansey noticed. 

"What happened?" He asked, turning to Adam. 

"Nothing's going to happen." He said, leaning his head against the cool glass on the window. 

The sky opened up then, raining hail down. Penny-sized balls of ice slammed into the roof of the Pig, the din effectively killed the conversation. 

They pulled up to 300 Fox Way and sprinted to the door. Maura let them in and handed dish towels to them both to dry off with. "You're dripping all over the floor," She said, "Someone's going to slip."

"Coming, Adam?" Maura asked, heading towards the sitting room. Adam turned back to Gansey who was still standing awkwardly in the kitchen, drying off his ears. Just then there was a series of quick soft thuds as someone descended the stairs. 

"Hey did- Oh!" Blue said as she whipped around the corner. She smiled at them both, "Hi guys." 

Adam caught Gansey's eye and raised his eyebrows. Gansey's face was morphed into something between a grimace and a grin until Adam smiled, then his grin bloomed. 

"Hello Jane! I've just given Adam a ride. It's raining terribly out there." 

"Well aren't you a white knight." She rolled her eyes, but there was the start of a grin on her lips

Adam followed Maura to the sitting room. Persephone's deck, no, his deck now, he supposed, was already on the table. Calla was in an armchair with one leg thrown over the arm, she sipped from a coffee mug. 

Adam sat and shuffled his cards, letting his hands pass over each one carefully. He held his fingers over them, letting the information flow. He closed his eyes, and the sound of the rain was amplified. 

He couldn’t think. Every time something tried to reach out to him it got shut out by the pounding of hail on the roof. It was fast and hard and was making Adam dizzy. Each _tink tink tink_ of the hail on the roof turned into _thud thud thud_ in Adam’s brain. 

_Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

_This,_ he thought so suddenly it felt like someone else had said it, _This messy chaos is what it should have felt like. It should have been pounding and terrifying._

But the sitting room, surrounded by rain, was cold enough to numb his fingertips. Nothing like the kiss. It was too loud and frustrating, unlike the kiss. Hard, where the kiss had not been. 

The sound and the kiss had the same dizzying effect on him. 

An hour passed with Adam gleaning nothing from the cards or Cabeswater. He opened his eyes just as Gansey tapped on the door frame. 

His friend smiled at him, "It’s 4:30. You ready?" 

Adam nodded and stood. The rain and the hail had stopped by the time they stepped outside, but the pounding remained in his head. 

As the night progressed, the pounding drilled into Adam's skull, leaving him with a headache. He couldn’t focus, his vision kept blurring. If this migraine got any worse, he was going to puke on the engine of this car. 

There was a loud tapping at the metal garage door and for a brief terrifying moment Adam thought the rain had started up again. 

Adam whipped around to find the source of the sound. Ronan Lynch was leaning against the garage door. His shoulders were pushed forward. 

Adam crossed his arms and frowned, "What?"

Ronan just sneered and crossed his own arms to match Adam's. 

"What?" Adam asked again, letting his anger and exhaustion from the day seep into his words. 

"You didn't take your bike out of the Pig. Gansey sent Noah and me to pick you up." 

Adam threw the wrench he’d been holding into the toolbox where it clanked and bounced back out. He sighed and walked over to put it back. He wiped his hands on his work coveralls before he shrugged out of them. When he looked back, Ronan quickly looked down. Back to normal. 

"Alright, let's go." He said, walking out to the BMW. Adam went for the back seat, but Noah wasn’t in the front. "I thought you said Noah was with you." 

"Yeah, he's right he-" Ronan ducked down to look through the window. "Fucker." He grumbled. "Alright. Hop in Parrish. We got places to be." 

"Can't you just drive me home? I don't feel great and I'm not in the mood to watch you get pissed at sleeping cows for a couple of hours." 

Concern flashed across Ronan's face, dimmed by the night outside, "Are you okay?" 

"Yeah, just. Headache." Adam leaned his head back into the seat and closed his eyes. 

A moment later something rattled and landed in Adam's lap. He blinked and looked down. There was a bottle of aspirin staring up at him. They were in the parking lot of the CVS a few streets down from St. Agnes. He must have fallen asleep, they’d been driving for at least ten minutes. 

"Why'd you stop?" Adam asked. Ronan flicked his eyes down to the bottle and back up to Adam. "You didn't have to stop." 

"Do you have anything at home?"

"No."

"So we stopped."

Adam frowned but popped the top. He tore off the silver seal and dug out the cotton ball. "I could've gotten it." 

"I already had it in the car." Ronan lied, and tossed the receipt out the window as they sped out of the parking lot. 

Ronan yanked the BMW into the parking lot of the church. He left the car idling. 

"Are you coming up?" Adam asked. 

Ronan snapped his head up. He looked bewildered, which was not an expression Ronan Lynch usually wore. Adam watched him swallow.

"Nah. Noah was kicking my ass at scrabble before Dick kicked us out. I better get back and make sure he's not cheating while I'm gone." 

"Sounds fair." Ronan wasn’t coming up. So everything _wasn’t_ back to normal. Adam slid out of the car and trudged up the stairs. He lay awake in bed until he couldn’t anymore. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A car horn blared in Adam's dreams. He rolled over, head falling off the flat pillow. The horn blared again. Maybe not a dream. He blinked awake slowly. Adam's bed was in the perfect place for sunlight to stream into his window at exactly 7:08am and blind him. 

The horn went off, repeatedly. Adam slid off of bed and peeked out the window. The BMW was parked out front while Ronan Lynch punched the horn. 

_This would be the ending scene in a romantic comedy_ , Adam thought, _If we were going to kiss again._

_We aren’t going to kiss again._

Ronan was just here because Adam still didn’t have his bike. Ronan was just here because he always was. 

"You still don't have your bike." Ronan said as Adam approached the car. 

"I know." He said. 

The drive was silent. Or as close to silence as one could get when the radio was spewing music that sounded like many different vehicles pleasuring themselves. Adam's headache was gone after the aspirin and a few consecutive hours of sleep, but he worried it would come back any moment. 

"Hey." Ronan said, turning the volume down. They were about five minutes from school. "You wanna skip?" 

"Why would _I_ want to skip?" 

Ronan shrugged, not looking at Adam, "Because you want to come watch me get pissed at some sleeping cows." 

Adam rolled his eyes and looked out the window. The street that led towards Aglionby was coming up on the right. Ronan had not flicked on his turn signal. 

"Speak now or forever hold your peace." Ronan said, merging into the right lane, but still not indicating he would be turning.

"Go" Adam said. Ronan clicked on his signal with a sigh and looked behind him. "No," Adam said a little louder, "Go. Let's go." He told Ronan firmly. 

A wicked grin bloomed across Ronan's face. That particular grin usually promised imminent pavement burn and scabs. 

They sped past the school. 

Ronan left the volume low on the radio. The silence grew heavy. It sat hard in Adam's chest. 

"I shouldn't have done that," He said after a moment. Adam slumped down in the seat. He wasn’t that tired but was like his body was conditioned towards exhaustion. 

"Done what? Kidnapped me? If you're really feeling regret there's still time to turn around and make it to first period." He said. 

"Not that, the uh," Ronan Lynch's voice was not designed to sound unsure. It sounded wrong. Like his vocal cords didn’t know to make the right tone. "The thing the other night." 

_Oh._

"The, uh.."

"Yeah." 

A breath of silence passed. Then another. 

"Fuck. Anyway I should have asked." Ronan said. "I did ask. I should have asked before."

"What are you talking about?" 

"I should have asked if it was okay before I ki-" He hung his head forward for a second, but the car didn’t drift from its path. When he looked up at the road again he said, "Before I did anything, I should have asked."

This wasn’t right. Ronan didn’t talk. When he spoke he growled. He moved without explaining himself. Yet here he was. Explaining. It made Adam feel on edge. Like he was on a precipice. 

Adam wished he could just stay quiet, until the conversation was left in the Henrietta dust on the side of the road. But instead he said, "Better to ask forgiveness than permission."

"Fuck that." Ronan snorted. 

"No seriously. When have you ever asked before doing something? That's not you. Gansey asks. You do. You just do." 

"Not about something like that." His hands were tight on the steering wheel. 

Adam wanted to let it drop. He wanted to say he didn’t care. He wanted to tell Ronan it didn't matter because it wasn’t going to happen again. But instead he said, "I like that about you." 

Very, very, subtly the BMW changed speeds. It slowed down for a beat, before it picked back up again. 

Adam groaned then dropped his head in his hands. He stayed there for exactly two breaths then sat up. He lifted his chin. 

"I like that about you. I like the way you don't ask, you just do. Yeah, it makes you an asshole." Ronan snorted again and Adam continued, "But, I don't know. It's fearless. You're not scared." 

Ronan rolled his eyes. He mumbled something that Adam couldn’t quite pick up over the sound that came from the radio, as low as it was. 

"What?" Adam asked. He turned his head so his right ear could pick up whatever Ronan was saying. 

"I am though. Scared.” Ronan spoke up, just enough to be heard, “I'm scared you're going to say no." 

"Why are you saying that?" Adam asked.

"Because I-" Ronan started. 

"No. Shut up. Why are you talking. Pull over."

His heart was beating so fast. It was beating hard. Ronan was soft. 

The car slid to a stop and dust flew up, enveloping the car. The ignition wasn’t even turned off yet as Adam clicked out of his seatbelt. He lunged. He grabbed Ronan's face and pressed their lips together. 

Ronan's mouth was open in shock. He gaped for a moment before he moved against Adam. Moved with Adam. They kissed. Adam wasn’t as soft as Ronan had been. 

Ronan pulled back after a moment. "Fuck, Parrish. Wait. Do you-

"Shut up. Shut up. Ronan Lynch doesn't talk. He does. Fucking do. Kiss me." 

Ronan met Adam's mouth again. It was warm. It was relieving. It dug down to the lowest part of Adam's gut and pulled. And it was soft.

**Author's Note:**

> sarah/ronanremembers read this through first because I cant stick to one tense all the way through writing time isn't real. 
> 
> throw rocks at my window im at corvidyouths dot tumblr dot com
> 
> also literally slap me if I should midnight sun this fucker
> 
> UPDATE! HEY SOME MADE AN ART OF THAT KISS LOOK AT IT http://arixte.tumblr.com/post/132912756449/corvidyouths-wrote-the-worst-pynch-fic-ever-and-i


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